In their efforts to foster a community of tech enthusiast on campus, GrinTECH, one of Grinnell’s newest organizations, has worked to arrange a wide range of events including professional panels, conference trips and coding crash courses. Their most recent event, a Tech Exhibition, was a way for students to showcase their projects and create professional connections.
On March 12, students congregated in Harris center to learn about each other’s work and display their own.
Among those at the exhibition was Dev Sethia ‘25, who presented how he used physics, math, and tech to study and record “the overtaking ability of a Formula One car” through mapping “the areas of high and low turbulence created by the slipstream effect and dirty air.”
Ella Papp ‘25 displayed her digital art and pet portraitures. She said, “It was so adorable when these little kids came up to me and asked me to draw a frog for them, and to let them try digital drawing for the first time.”
Michael Andrzejewski ‘23 showed the many virtual applications he has created including a Spider-Man-themed grappling hook game and a physics destruction game.
Andrzejewski says “getting an audience is sometimes very difficult at Grinnell, and this opportunity has allowed me to show my work to much more people — I am very excited for the next one.”
Andrzejewski was not the only student who felt that this exhibition gave them a chance to display their hard work.
Sethia says: “I’ve had this project sitting on my computer for so long and I applied immediately when this opportunity arose.”
GrinTech cabinet member Nandika Jhunjhunwala ‘24 hopes that this event help reinvigorate Grinnell’s tech community.
“Campus culture has changed a lot post-pandemic, and students have been left with little to no opportunities to learn about tech and to showcase their own projects,” she said.
“The exhibition was an overall success for it showed that sharing projects isn’t just important for connecting Grinnellians, but also for motivating them to work further on their projects and to start lining up the next ones,” said GrinTECH cabinet member Mitsuru Watanabe ‘24.
Papp felt similarly. She said, “I really appreciate opportunities like this as they really positively impact me and push me to work even harder on future projects.”
GrinTECH plans on making this an annual exhibition. They have ambitious plans for their next events and are doing their best to keep on upping the scale, said the cabinet members.
Shrey Agrawal said “whenever we plan an event, we try to make it fit within the three core values we have defined for the organization: professional development, community volunteering and education.”
GrinTECH also recently piloted a Python Crash Course, which was one of the only opportunities on campus for students to learn the increasingly sought-after programming language.
“We just wanted to break that barrier of entry into programming for students and try to make it seem less daunting and intimidating, especially for non-Computer Science students who may have never coded before,” said Agrawal.
Furthermore, GrinTECH is hoping to create a self-sustaining community around tech that will have a constant and long-lasting impact for years to come.
“Inventions like the light bulb would have been practically useless if they were left sitting in a drawer somewhere … it is essential for us to see and showcase tech, regardless of how revolutionary or conventional we may deem it to be,” said Agrawal.
